NRL chief Todd Greenberg on Sunday defended the game's commercial links to gambling in the wake of the allegations levelled at Tim Simona, insisting administrators were working hard to maintain "a really strong balance" between the sport's integrity and catering for thousands of supporters who enjoyed punting on the competition.
League Central last year agreed to a $60 million deal with Sportsbet in making the corporate bookmaker league's official betting partner and is also reaping a far greater windfall from the gambling industry than in previous years thanks to lucrative percentage-of-turnover contracts secured with betting agencies in 2015.
The emergence this month of an NRL integrity unit investigation into Simona's alleged betting activity on the game - the Wests Tigers centre is facing deregistration amid claims he arranged bets on opposition players - came with news that a NSW police strike force was still probing unrelated allegations of match fixing in the game.
Greenberg indicated the misconduct of individual players did not mean the NRL should scale back its relationships with gambling outlets.
"There is a really strong balance here," he said during an interview with ABC News 24 aired on Sunday.
"I made some strong comments last year you'll remember about anyone involved in match fixing or gambling inside the game against the rules will face life bans and I stand by that because that really cuts to the absolute core of the integrity of the sport. For you and I to turn up every week to watch that contest, we need to know that's pure. Anyone who gets in the way of that will absolutely not be welcome back.
"But we do have to find a balance because people, particularly in this country, they love to have a bet. And we're not going to get away from that. So whether or not we have branding or not, people are still going to be looking to have a wager on the game.
"What we need to do, though, [is] we need to talk and market ourselves to those people who want to do that. We've got to make sure that we're very fundamental in how we have principles around those sorts of agreements. We're trying very hard in this space.
"There are a lot of my friends, a lot of your friends, who really enjoy to have a punt on a weekend, whether it's football, whether it's cricket or the horses. A lot of people in Australia enjoy punting. It's a difficult way to find this balance between enjoying the game but also making sure we're responsible."
Simona has until Friday to present his case to the integrity unit after being provided with documentation from the NRL relating to the case against him last week.
